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An Unplanned Hiatus

I'm a bit shocked to realise I haven't blogged at all for a month. I hadn't intended to take a break; other stuff has just got in the way of writing up reviews. I now have a rather intimidating pile of books I've read but not reviewed...

There are some real treasures in that pile, I'm confident a few will make my list of favourite reads this year. I'll try and catch up with reviewing them all over the next week or two.

I've also become increasingly less bothered about using GoodReads to log what I'm reading. I haven't decided yet whether to catch up or just let it slide completely. While I mull it over I still need a way of keeping track...perhaps here on the blog.

With that in mind, my next read is a history book by Gill Hoffs called The Sinking of RMS Tayleur. It tells the story of another White Star Line ship's maiden voyage that ended in disaster. I'm looking forward to it as I know absolutely nothing about the incident. Yet.

The story of Lizzie Borden has a whiff of folklore about it, it feels hazy to me, apocryphal perhaps, something half known and uncertain like Washington and the cherry tree or the ride of Paul Revere. Shamefully, I had to Google both the latter two examples to double check they were the events I thought I was referring to. I choose them deliberately though - is it my Englishness that makes these events fuzzy to me? Do these stories live in the American psyche the way Magna Carta, Henry VIII and his six wives, and Jack the Ripper (to select three almost at random) live in mine?
I remember a book we stocked when I was a very young bookseller at Waterstones in Watford that looked at the psychology of children who murder their parents. The copy on the back of the book talked of Lizzie Borden. I remember half wondering about the case, then shelving the book away and moving onto the next armful. But it stuck in my m…

My nieces and nephews and I have a monthly book club, called Book Chase (although it sometimes gains an extra 's' to become Book Chasse). The rules are simple: we all bring something we've read during the last month, talk about it to each other, and eat snacks. We live tweet each meeting with the hashtag BookChase. Sometimes, when we remember, we Storify all the tweets too. This month, we remembered!